Why America would follow Canada's political lead is mind boggling.

The Electoral College is an
important part of the checks and balances built into our Constitution,
and is now under siege precisely because of its role in checking
centralized power.

The American Founders foresaw the dangers of large urban centers being
able to overwhelm the smaller states. For this reason, each state is
represented by two Senators, regardless of the state's population.
That Wyoming and New York each have two Senators is inconsistent with
"one-man-one-vote," but fully consistent with protecting Wyoming from
being bullied by a federal government run on New York values.

Similarly, each state's representation in the Electoral College is
determined by the sum of the Senate and House seats, thereby giving
extra clout to small states. This keeps the presidential race from
focusing entirely on urban population centers. The fact that states
vote as states helps maintain state governments as independent centers
of power.

Americans — who have largely been ignorant of the national election
held in Canada on November 27 — should look to the Canadian political
system for the poignant lesson it provides on the value of checks and
balances to protect minorities and to discourage centralization. In
Canada, power is concentrated in the central government in Ottawa. The
House of Commons, like the U.S. House of Representatives, is elected
from districts approximately equal in population. Thus, Members of
Parliament from the two most populous provinces — Ontario and Quebec —
far outnumber the MPs from all other provinces. While American
senators are elected two-per-state, Canadian senators are appointed by
the head of the national government. Dennis Young, assistant to
Saskatchewan's Member of Parliament Garry Breitkreuz, explained:

Our Senate was supposed to protect the interests of the
underpopulated provinces of the country but was flawed from the
outset. Senators are appointed solely by the Prime Minister. The
Senate has enough power to provide provincial or regional balance to
the representation by population in the House of Commons, but it
doesn't use the power because, in the end, they owe their positions
to the Prime Minister who appointed them.

If Senators from the
western or maritime provinces were loyal to their home provinces,
rather than to the prime minister who appointed them, they would still
have difficulty in stopping centralization. Ontario and Quebec have 24
senators each. Most of the other provinces have only six.

Prof. Gary Mauser, of Simon Fraser University (in British Columbia),
explains that Canada's parliamentary form of government contains no
checks and balances on power: "Majority control of Parliament…combines
the executive and legislative branches of government."

Furthermore, the prime minister appoints all Supreme Court justices
without any requirement that he consult with, or receive consent from,
any other governmental body.

So while America has
three genuinely independent branches of federal government (and a
legislative branch divided into two independent parts), Canada has no
meaningful separation of powers. The head of one part of the
legislative branch (the prime minister) controls the executive branch,
the Supreme Court, and the Senate. There is no meaningful check on the
power of a single man to impose his will on the entire nation.

The Canadian system drastically simplifies the problem of passing
controversial national legislation. For example, a previous Liberal
administration abolished capital punishment, clearly against the will
of the people.

In 1995, Prime Minister
Jean Chretien demanded and got the Firearms Act, a national system of
firearm registration and licensing. The Firearms Act has been bitterly
contested from its inception, especially by gun owners in the western
provinces.

The provincial governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have
announced their refusal to administer not only the new federal gun
control laws, but also the 66-year-old handgun registry. They further
refused to prosecute offenders, and threw the whole matter back into
Ottawa's lap.

The gun-rights issue helped Canada's main opposition party, the
Alliance, in the Western and Maritime provinces; but by sweeping
Ontario and picking up scattered districts elsewhere, Chretien's
Liberal party returned to power. Of course Chretien had an advantage
enjoyed by no American president: the ability to choose the date of
the next election.

The concentration of power in any central government is dangerous. If
Americans had Canada's government structure, we'd have far more than
the 22,000 gun regulations already on our books. Essentially, if the
president wanted severe gun control or prohibition, that's what we'd
get.

How far Bill Clinton — or Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, and Franklin
Roosevelt — would have gone if they didn't have to convince two
independent bodies of Congress can't be estimated for certain. But
it's likely that the Second Amendment would be a thing of the past by
now. As in Canada, the right to own firearms for lawful protection
would be abolished, with hunters allowed an increasingly constricted
"privilege" to own government-approved rifles and shotguns for
hunting. That Americans overwhelmingly support the right to
self-defense would have made no more difference than the fact that the
majority of Canadians today support the right of self-defense.

Austrian economist Friedrich August von Hayek noted this half a
century ago:

Power has an inherent tendency to expand and where there are no
effective limitations it will grow without bounds, whether it is
exercised in the name of the people or in the name of a few. Indeed,
there is reason to fear that unlimited power in the hands of the
people [i.e. majority rule] will grow farther and be even more
pernicious in its effects than power exercised by few.

When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular
government…enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest
both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the
public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction,
and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular
government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are
directed.

Yes, there are dangers when a centralized government goes against the
wishes of the people (as the Canadian government did on self-defense).
But the greater danger is when a government has majority popular
support, and can act without respect for the rights of minorities.

Today, Canada is a country steeped in socialism. Typical of socialist
societies, its government provides — or at least promises — goodies
like "free" universal national health care. But the abject failure and
myths of socialized medicine are quickly exposed by the number of
Canadians who flock to the U.S. each year to obtain the medical
services they can't obtain at home, or who must wait so long that
delivery of those services is tantamount to denial. Complained Sara
Oster, a 26-year old post-graduate student at the University of
Toronto, "I shouldn't be waiting a year to receive an MRI."

It is a simple fact that
no country can provide top-notch, free universal health care without
bankrupting itself sooner or later.

Prime Minister Jean Chretien was swept into an unprecedented third
term by the lure of billions of dollars he promised Canadians to fix
their country's medical system. According to Canadian papers,
"healthcare [was] the most vigorously debated issue in this election,
and it [was] the one that took the forefront at both the English and
French leader debates."

Never mind that it was Chretien who created Canada's national health
care crisis in the first place by cutting funding from it. But instead
of telling Canadians the truth — that no government can provide a
"free" medical system — Chretien promised billions of dollars to "fix"
theirs.

As Canada's
majority-approved destruction of the health care system shows, you can
fool most of the people some of the time. That's why purely
majoritarian political systems like Canada's, which impose no internal
checks and balances on the majority party, are so likely to lead a
country to disaster. Why, in one of the richest countries in the
world, should women be denied pain medication during childbirth?

Which brings us back to the Electoral College. Like a Senate chosen by
states, like a system of government with three genuinely independent
branches, the Electoral College is part of a broader constitutional
system to ensure that a gullible plurality of the electorate —
especially a majority centered in a few urban areas (such as the
megapolitan clusters of counties carried by Gore) — won't necessarily
be able to take the country down the rights-constricting,
government-expanding path of Canada.

It should therefore come
as no surprise that Senator-elect Hillary Clinton would waste no time
in proposing legislation that calls for a Constitutional Amendment to
abolish the Electoral College. It's just a natural progression of the
Clinton-Gore administration's attempts during the last 8 years to
dismantle the Constitution in every way possible.

If you'd like to live in
a country where it's against the law to protect your family from a
violent home invader, and where you get "free" health care of lower
quality than what a pet receives in the United States, and if you
think the American Founders were fools for wanting to prevent the
concentration of political power, then by all means try to get rid of
the Electoral College.

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Nothing written here is to be construed as
necessarily representing the views of the Independence Institute or as an
attempt to influence any election or legislative action. Please send
comments to Independence Institute, 727 East 16th Ave., Denver, Colorado 80203 Phone 303-279-6536. (email)webmngr @ i2i.org